I got a number of replies from you guys in another thread, and decided to make a new one as to not pollute that one up with more off topic questions. I'll make the mods that were suggested when I get back to the computer. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel room in LA, going to a Solidworks convention for the next couple days, then some CAMWorks training later in the week, and I don't trust anyone there to modify it, especially not by 11yo daughter! lol.

Not being there, and not having a remote viewer installed on them so I can monitor them from here and going by the My Computers link on the site, it looks like possibly a couple of my computers have ran out of work? I see that both the new one and FlashFlyer are running a number of hours late in reporting back to the project, and I can see how this can happen if they are out of work and get backed off by the project if it doesn't have any work to send.

Reading the Panic Mode thread, it sounded like things are pretty sparse now, might this be the reason? Also, not sure how hard I want to drive the new one, because if I push it too far, with keyboard delays and such, I will most certainly hear all about it from my daughter when she is using it (maybe 2-5 hours, 3 days a week on average, sometimes 4). Is there a way to easily throttle back the aggressiveness when the computer is in use? I know that it can be set to suspend when in use, but I was hoping to keep processing, just not as aggressively, and not have to change the config file when she is going to use it. I know, 1st world problems and all that, but I like pushing my hardware when it makes sense, which is most of the time, but this is a special circumstance.

Since it is a native quad core CPU i would suggest to run only 3 instances on CPU plus one on GPU.
This way it has plenty of ressources left for other work.
The GPU is fast enough to run with optimized params.

I do it this way and can even play games without any slowdowns.
Your daughter shouldn`t even notice something is running in the background and it should also be stable.With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

This is easy to set in "Computing preferences".
You can have Boinc suspend activity at a certain level by setting "Suspend when non-BOINC CPU usage is above X%".
I have mine set at 20%, and run Boinc/Seti 24/7 with no ill effects on keyboard/mouse, and use the computer quite a lot all day.Humans may rule the world...but bacteria run it...

Mike, thanks for the thoughts. Zalster made a recommendation to load up the GPU bit with a little more aggressive tunings for the SOG app, as it has a 980Ti, and I like the idea of that, just want it to behave nicely while doing so. Might have to make some compromises either in performance, or the fiddle factor, but in the end I figure it'll be worth it.

Ghia, I was hoping to keep it running, just 'toned down' a little while it was in use, and not to totally suspend it while she is using it. My guess is, it isn't going to be easy or maybe even possible to do what I want, other than swapping out configs back and forth, going from aggressive to milder when it is going to be used, and then back to full throttle when it isn't. If that is the only real way to achieve it, I'll probably have to settle for highest threshold of pain setting, where it is still crunching adequately, but not causing meaningful issues when she's using it. Like I said before, I know, I know, 1st world problems... ;-)

Ghia, I was hoping to keep it running, just 'toned down' a little while it was in use, and not to totally suspend it while she is using it. My guess is, it isn't going to be easy or maybe even possible to do what I want, other than swapping out configs back and forth, going from aggressive to milder when it is going to be used, and then back to full throttle when it isn't. If that is the only real way to achieve it, I'll probably have to settle for highest threshold of pain setting, where it is still crunching adequately, but not causing meaningful issues when she's using it. Like I said before, I know, I know, 1st world problems... ;-)

Then I'd say it is a question of experimenting to find the "pain point". At 20% here, it takes some heavy application use before it suspends at all (like graphical editing calculations) . And if/when it does, it is usually only for a few seconds. As usual, it is difficult to have your cake and eat it too... ;-)Humans may rule the world...but bacteria run it...

Went back into the BIOS screen, and didn't see a place to turn off the iGPU, only choice was to set my primary as that or PCI-E, ...

I don't know if your daughter does some serious gaming, but if not you may consider to connect the monitor to the iGPU so you can use the GTX card exclusively for crunching. I use a similar setup on my i5-6500 with a GTX-750 card. The Skylake iGPU is more than sufficient for browsing and watching videos (and even playing simple games).
I had lag issues when I had my monitor connected to the GTX card (and using it while crunching), but no problem whatsoever while connected to the iGPU. And now the GTX can keep on crunching while I am doing other things. Just make sure you do not use the iGPU for crunching (bad idea anyway) and you do not use all cores so the system is still usable for other things (I have set it to use only 75% of the available cores).

Hey Tom, thanks for the suggestion, I will try to give that a try as well, I have never used a iGPU other than on servers for the most part. I've heard they are sort of getting decent, but I have a pretty strong bias against them for anything other than monitoring. So, I guess we'll see how it goes!

I finally managed to snag a 1070Ti, was used but supposedly not mined with. So, now that it is on the way, I was wondering which card would give better performance, a 1070Ti or a 980Ti? Nothing like ready, fire, aim, eh?

If memory serves me, I thought a 1070 was in the same neighborhood as a 980Ti, but used less power, and the Ti version has a little more Omph than the non Ti, so maybe will perform slightly better? It will be nice to have the heat exhaust directly out of the case though.